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Friday, February 15, 2013

Little Bunny Update

As Katsu and Mochi approached their seven month old mark, signs of puberty were present. Everywhere. They both took to spraying urine outside - onto the floor, the rug, whatever was withing five feet of the cage. Gross. Katsu (the dude) decided his cardboard oatmeal container would make a good bunny substitute..if you know what I mean. Things were getting pretty nasty.

So after an endless game of phone tag (by both Sak and my mom (who pretended to be me, since I have phone-phobia)), we finally got an appointment for surgery at the local humane society.

The night before the surgery, I let each one out of the cage (one at a time!) for some floor exercise. Katsu, hormone-filled as ever, decided to play romeo. I don't really know how he did it, but somehow he jumped back into his cage (a good 2-2.5 feet up), then out on top of Mochi's portion of the cage. In his hunt for a way into the female apartment, he scratched his leg on something (probably a cage tie-down wire?). I came back from whatever it was I was doing, and saw a trail of blood all over the house. WHAT.

We found him hiding behind the cage, licking his fresh wound. He wasn't limping, but we needed to stop the bleeding so Sak grabbed a towel and wrestled him down, while I pressed a clean cloth against his leg until the blood clotted. Kinda scary though, and quite a mess to clean up afterwards. It was a good thing the vet appointment was the following day!

Sak dropped them off in the morning, and was late to work since someone cut in front of him in line. :P The vet checked them both out first, and said that Katsu had torn his hind nail a bit, which was the cause of the bleeding. Good thing it was nothing too serious!

My brother picked them up later in the day, and the poor bunnies were seriously drugged up!

It took Katsu about half a day before he started moving and eating again. Mochi, probably due to her more invasive surgery, still isn't moving much. She'll eat if I put the food right in front of her, but it's probably too painful for her to walk around. They didn't give us any bunny pain-killers either, so I can only imagine she's feeling pretty bad!

In two weeks they'll be allowed to hang out together (yay!), and I'm thinking of getting them a new cage/hutch when that happens. They chewed up the plastic sides of their current cage, which makes the shavings/food/poo fall out easier. I know, gross.

I'm hoping they'll soon be less moody and territorial, but Katsu is still "fond" of his oatmeal container. I wonder if that habit is here to stay, or if it just take a while for the hormones to die down? I guess we'll see.

Last week I found my older orchid from Cousin T's wedding (which had finally bloomed again after a good 6 months!) wilting. I wailed a bit about the misfortune, and went to go inspect the poor plant. Turns out the stem was totally broken...but it was propped against the wall so you couldn't tell. >.>" Yep. It was broken-Darth-Vader-cup all over again. I guess I'm scary when I'm mad, cause Sak's first instinct when something breaks is to hide it and hope I won't notice. :P

In any case, he said one of the rabbits ran into the bookshelf and knocked it over, thus breaking the stem.

I put it in some water, but it's a goner.

I don't know how long it'll take for a new stem to grow, but I accept the half-apology orchid in any case :)

Lastly, some quick Valentine's favors put together for co-workers:

I used one of the heart cut-outs that come with the silhouette software and backed it with a circle of cream paper. Simple, but pretty cute!

Awwww, sounds like a rough time all around. I remember Chupito was a lot better behaved after he got fixed though, the number one thing being that he stopped spraying everything. My favorite thing, though, was that he loved to "circle" our feet as a mating dance - and that still continued even after the fact! So I don't know if the inappropriate gesturing will go away. Also Chupito still chewed up everything even though he was fixed :( But hopefully these bundles will be a bit more delightful for you. Good luck!

Oh man, sorry to hear abou the bunny drama. It always sucks when they're in the transitional phase. Right now, we're potty training Leela and she has been doing ok. If she's mad at us, or frustrated, she'll intentionally pee or poop right next to her diaper pad to send us a message.